3-2 DUSSIAS 06-04-08.DOC 6/5/2008 6:01:07 PM INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES UNDER SIEGE: THE NATIVE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE • ALLISON M. DUSSIAS It’s soul-satisfying to be able to read and speak your own language. — Richard Littlebear, Northern Cheyenne1 [L]anguage is so important, because it is one thing that we can keep alive, that can never change. If we’re able to keep our language going, we’ll be able to pass on knowledge, from generation to generation. Without it, we’re going to lose so much. We’re going to be just like everybody else. We can tell them . this is how it was . We used to dance, but we don’t know our songs. We used to have these traditional activities, but we can’t do them no more, because we can’t talk. We would lose so much without our language. — Dorothy Rock, Santa Clara2 Language is at the heart of our sociocultural systems of kinship and identity. 3 — Professor Christine Sims, Acoma • Professor of Law, New England School of Law; J.D., University of Michigan, 1987; A.B., Georgetown University, 1984. 1 James Hagengruber, Cheyenne Language Surviving, Canku Ota, Nov. 3, 2001, http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues01/Co11032001/CO_11032001_Cheyenne_ Language.htm. Dr. Littlebear is the President of Chief Dull Knife College in Lame Deer, Montana. Id. 2 Jodi Shultz, Language and Identity Among New Mexico Pueblos, 2000, http://si.unm.edu/Web%20Journals/Articles/Jodi%20Shultz.html (last visited Feb. 26, 2008) (quoting HOLGER S. SCHULTZ, PUEBLO VOICES: DEFINING THE ROLE OF PUEBLO EDUCATION 172-73 (1998)). 3 Recovery and Preservation of Native American Languages: Field Hearing before the House Comm. on Education and the Workforce, 109th Cong. 29 (2006) [hereinafter 2006 NALA Amendments Hearing] (statement of Ryan Wilson, 3-2 DUSSIAS 06-04-08.DOC 6/5/2008 6:01:07 PM 6 INTERCULTURAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 3 The title of this year’s Tribal Sovereignty Symposium, “Indigenous and Minority Languages under Siege,” conjures up images of these languages being set upon by enemies and perhaps fighting for their very survival. This is an accurate picture, news reports and scholarly studies tell us, where the languages of many Native American tribes are concerned. With each passing year, it seems, there are several more reports of the last fluent speaker of a Native American language passing away. In 1996, for example, Red Thunder Cloud, the last speaker of Catawba, died, and, in the words of one journalist, took “to the grave the last human link to the ancient language of his people.”4 In January of this year, Marie Smith Jones, a Native Alaskan who was the last fluent speaker of Eyak and worked with linguist Michael Krauss on an Eyak dictionary and grammar, passed away.5 The loss of indigenous languages is certainly not confined to North America. A linguistic race against time is currently underway, for example, to gather information from an 82-year-old woman who is the last known speaker of Dura, the language of the Dura ethnic group of Nepal; the other remaining speaker died last year.6 In a congressional hearing on language recovery and preservation, held in the summer of 2006, one witness noted that linguists believe that there were approximately 300 languages spoken in North America prior to 1492.7 Of the languages that are still in use in Native American communities, it is estimated that only twenty will remain viable by 2050.8 In a Senate hearing held in 2000, linguist Michael Krauss offered estimates of the number of Native President of the National Indian Education Association). 4 David Stout, Red Thunder Cloud, 76, Dies, and Catawba Tongue with Him, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 14, 1996, at 33; see also Pamela M. Walsh, Red Thunder Cloud, Efforts Helped Preserve Catawba Language: at 76, BOSTON GLOBE, Jan. 14, 1996, at 44 (noting that the Catawba Nation credited Red Thunder Cloud with “single- handedly keeping its language and much of its culture alive for the past 40 years”). 5 Mary Pemberton, Obituary, Marie Smith Jones, 89, Last Full-blooded Alaskan Eyak, BOSTON GLOBE, Jan. 25, 2008, at B6. Ms. Jones was 89. See id. 6 Andrew Buncombe, Battle to Save the Last of Nepal’s Dura Speakers, INDEP., Jan. 17, 2008, at 28. 7 2006 NALA Amendments Hearing, supra note 3, at 17. 8 Id. 3-2 DUSSIAS 06-04-08.DOC 6/5/2008 6:01:07 PM 2008] INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES UNDER SIEGE 7 American languages that fall into several categories of endangerment, based on the age of those who speak them. Of the approximately 175 living languages, spread over 29 states, about 20 (11%) are still spoken by children as well as adults; about 30 (17%) are spoken by parental generations and up; about 70 (40%) are spoken by the grandparental generation and up; and about 55 (30%) “are very nearly extinct, and will be gone in the next 10 years, unless something radical is done.”9 Even those languages that are still spoken by children cannot be considered safe. Krauss noted, for example, that 20-30 years ago, Navajo was spoken by 90% of 6 year olds; today it is spoken by only about 50% of them.10 How have Native American languages, like the languages of other indigenous peoples around the world, arrived at this crisis stage? Is this simply the result of the passage of time, in an environment in which non-Native American society’s sheer numbers, and its ever-present English-language media, including the “cultural nerve gas of television,”11 inevitably swamp Native American languages and lead to their replacement by English? Or has this situation resulted from more deliberate action on the part of the dominant society, acting through its laws and other mechanisms of government power? We should also ask, given that so many Native American languages are threatened with extinction today, what can and should be done about this situation? In particular, what role can and should the government of the United States play in stabilizing, preserving, and even revitalizing Native American languages? In this article, I would like to share some thoughts on the answers to these questions. First, in Part I, I discuss the history of 9 Native American Languages Act Amendments: Hearing on S. 2688 Before the Senate Comm. on Indian Affairs, 106th Cong. 30-31 (2000) (statement of Michael Krauss, Director of the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska -- Fairbanks). 10 Id. at 31. 11 James Brooke, Indians Striving to Save Their Languages, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 9, 1998, available at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E7D81 73DF93AA35757C0A96E958260&sec=spon=&pagewanted=2 (quoting Michael Krauss). 3-2 DUSSIAS 06-04-08.DOC 6/5/2008 6:01:07 PM 8 INTERCULTURAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 3 the U.S. government’s policy toward Native American languages, to see how the laws of the past contributed to the threats posed to Native American languages in the present. Situating the current issue of language preservation in this historical context promotes not only an understanding of how the present situation arose, but also suggests a responsibility on the part of the U.S. government to make a meaningful effort to remedy the devastating contemporary effects of its past policy toward Native American languages – a policy that the government itself has disavowed. After this examination of the law of the past, Part II moves on to consider the law of the present, to see how current U.S. law addresses Native American languages, most notably through the Native American Languages Acts of 1990, 1992, and 2006. Finally, Part III discusses the responsibility of the U.S. government to take on a greater role in fostering the preservation, stabilization, and revitalization of Native American languages. I. The Law of the Past – The Historical Treatment of Native American Languages To take away a people’s language is to begin to conquer them.12 If the people lose their language, they will lose their identity. They will be in the mainstream, falling through the rocks.13 12 152 Cong. Rec. E1894-02 (Sept. 28, 2006) (statement of Rep. Rick Renzi, who attributed the statement to “a wise friend”). 13 Brenda Norrell, Cyber O’odham: An Ancient Language Goes on the Internet, INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY, May 4-11, 1998, at A1 (quoting Rosita Whitehorse, an O'odham language teacher). 3-2 DUSSIAS 06-04-08.DOC 6/5/2008 6:01:07 PM 2008] INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES UNDER SIEGE 9 A. The Initial Onslaught: European Languages Arrive in North America Generations before the U.S. government became involved in teaching English to Native Americans, Europeans arrived in North America and began to teach their languages to the tribes that they encountered. At the time that Native Americans first found some rather confused Europeans wandering on their land, they were part of a North American population that spoke hundreds of different languages.14 In short, linguistic diversity has a very long heritage in the United States. French- and Spanish-speaking missionaries, following in the footsteps of the explorers of the sixteenth century, were the first to teach their languages to Native Americans.15 Thus, Spanish and French, rather than English, were North America’s original European languages. English began to establish a foothold after 1617, when King James I called for the education of Native Americans, which would include the teaching of English. Protestant ministers then began to establish institutions for the education of Native American youths, including Harvard College.16 English missionaries put a heavy 14 2006 NALA Amendments Hearing, supra note 3, at 17.